Personal injury compensation often starts with the short-term costs. Say that you get involved in a car accident. You may lose wages because you can’t go to work while you deal with the injury, and you also have medical bills from your trip to the hospital.
These can be an important place to begin when seeking compensation, but it is also crucial that you consider the long-term costs. These could be even more significant than the short-term challenges that you face. A successful case may help you seek compensation in both areas.
A spinal cord injury
For instance, consider something serious, like a spinal cord injury suffered in a car accident. According to some estimates, paraplegia could cost around $518,000 in the first year alone. These are the immediate costs that you want to cover.
But after that, there will be subsequent annual costs of nearly $70,000. If you accepted a settlement for the $518,000 and closed the case, you could quickly find yourself facing future financial hurdles and mounting costs.
Your age is also going to play a role in the costs that you face after the accident. To use paraplegia as an example again, if you are 50 years old at the time of the injury, estimates claim that your lifetime costs will be just over $1.5 million. But if you are 25 years old when you get injured, then your lifetime costs could be over $2.3 million.
This shows why you really need to consider the long-term ramifications when seeking compensation. Be sure you know what legal steps to take as you seek a fair settlement.